


can you hear the bumblebees swarm

by travellinglinen



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Action, Action & Romance, Angst, Darryl is too they're just idiots, Fluff, Humor, I hope at least, I promise this isn't as angsty as the og, Knives, M/M, Second Chances AU, Skephalo, Sparring, Yes im making that a tag, Zak is hopelessly head over heels, catch me making up lore for someone else's fic, listen idk skeppy teaches bad how to use knives and they spar, there is some tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:09:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25392148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/travellinglinen/pseuds/travellinglinen
Summary: "You okay?""Yeah." Feelings. He needs to talk about them. Probably. "I just miss. . .""Miss what?"You.Zak swallows. "Sparring," he says, because he's spent two years on his own and they've made him a coward. "I miss sparring."///alternate title: KNIFE FIGHTBased off of Aria_Cinabun's Second Chances fic bc I read it and physically could not help myself.
Relationships: Zak Ahmed/Darryl Noveschosch
Comments: 7
Kudos: 294





	can you hear the bumblebees swarm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aria_Cinabun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aria_Cinabun/gifts).



> Surprise??
> 
> Listen I was going to ask for permission to make a fic of your fic but then I accidentally started writing it,,,, I can take it down if you want me to, but I hope this is okay!
> 
> Your fic is INCREDIBLE and HEARTBREAKING. Been writing this since Chapter 8 so you k n o w this took me a while to get right lmao
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy x

Swords are bittersweet things.

Nowadays, anyway. Zak still sees them as a necessity - you _have_ to have a weapon on you, whether you're outside or inside, asleep or not. Daggers were always a good choice. Swords were better, if you could get them, or if you had the resources to forge them yourself.

Bows and crossbows. . . well, they were good in a pinch, but they broke quickly and you couldn't always retrieve your arrows.

So by the time it had been just Zak, Darryl, and Dave, they'd all been more than skilled with the closer-range stuff. Hand-to-hand, knives: even a bit they'd managed to figure out with staffs, stuff that wasn't just "bonk it on the head" or "aggressively poke from a distance".

Improvised weapons were good, but being able to improvise something you knew even a _little_ of how to use was better.

///

He knows he's not the same Zak he was just a month or so ago, for them. For him, the changes have either been landslides or gradual enough that he hadn't even noticed. He knows when Dave is spouting nonsense versus making an actual point, now, which Dave complains ruins his fun but had weirded Finn out so much that he'd left the room yelling about possession.

Someone's here.

Zak's eyes snap back into focus, but he's not actually paying what he's looking at any attention -

"Hey," Darryl says, unknowingly pulling the rug out from under Zak's paranoia.

He comes up and leans against the fence, his presence a hot brand where they're almost close enough to touch.

Zak is suddenly desperate for a hug.

That was one of the few perks of his timeline. He and Darryl had already had the silent-communication thing - have in this world, too - but dating had turned it up to eleven. Dave had liked to complain that they could be on different sides of the planet and still know what the other person was thinking.

He misses that too.

But in the real world, Darryl says his name and he's brought back to earth with a bump. He turns and sees green eyes, the same eyes that he'd looked into a lifetime ago and realised were glassy and dead -

Bile rises in his throat. Zak turns back to the field and stubbornly attempts to think about anything else.

There's a pause, and then Darryl's hand lands on his shoulder.

His heartrate practically jumps through the roof, but he recognises Darryl's hand instantly, knows its weight and warmth down to the way it presses, like it can anchor him to the earth through will alone.

"You okay?"

"Yeah." Feelings. He needs to talk about them. Probably. "I just miss. . ."

"Miss what?"

_You._

Zak swallows. "Sparring," he says, because he's spent two years on his own and they've made him a coward. "I miss sparring."

He does, but it's not what he meant to say. He can't decide if he's angry or not.

"Oh." Darryl looks like he'd expected him to say something else. Then he brightens, something occurring to him. "We must have all got pretty good at it, huh?"

"You most of all." The compliment tumbles from his mouth before he can stop it.

Darryl looks at him and snorts, leaning over to bump shoulders. "Sure, you muffin."

And suddenly -

Zak aches.

"You were," he says, more seriously this time. "At the end, it was me and you and Dave. All three of us trained together. You liked daggers more than you expected to, you said they were, uh - handy-dandy."

Darryl's face is half-confused, half-surprised. He also looks a little bit like he's going to laugh, which is probably Zak's fault - handy-dandy is such a _dumb saying_ that he doesn't think he'd managed to say it without his nose wrinkling.

"I was one of the last three?"

"One of the last two," Zak says. "Dave was next."

He doesn't think about the blood, or the sick feeling in his stomach when they'd found the bruise forming on Dave's torso, or the way they'd all gone silent, pale and wan and ghostlike in the moonlight shining through the window. No lights. 

Not that they'd needed any to hear the way Dave's chest had rattled as he'd breathed in, as he'd opened his mouth to say -

"Can you teach me something?"

\- not that.

"What?"

Darryl looks sheepish. "Well, I mean - it'd probably be really weird for you, but it's not like I _know,_ right, so - uhm -"

Zak laughs without quite meaning to, short but genuine. (It's just - he's still the _same._ Zak is weak for his fumbles and his laugh and all of him put together.)

Darryl jumps a little, but grins along, looking a little relieved to have been cut off.

"Sure, Darryl," he says, something light still tugging at the corners of his mouth. "I'll teach you how to fight again."

///

They don't see anyone on their way to the armoury or when they're making their way back, Zak comfortable in full gear and Darryl carrying his helmet under one arm.

Moving the training dummies to one side is easy work, but the loose straw is a hassle that neither of them can be bothered with. They leave it on the floor in thin, slippery puddles.

Zak passes over two of the four knives. Darryl's hands are warm and steady where he corrects his hold, though they're not as calloused as he's used to.

Darryl's green eyes are focused on his weapons, a little pull between his eyebrows. "These are still sharp. Won't they hurt?"

Zak shrugs one shoulder. "Learning to use the flat and the actual point is part of the training too," he says. "And I trust you not to stab me deliberately." He grins, quick and cheeky in a way that feels like it warms his whole face.

He'd meant it as a reference to all the threats over his trolling, but Darryl sucks in a breath so quickly that Zak thinks it might have legit given him hiccups.

Nice. He can't believe this is the guy he fell in love with. 

///

The metal in his hands is a familiar weight, steady and comforting in his palms. 

They've gone through a few warmups together, each one making the heat rise more and more on Zak's face. Dave had taught them both knives at the same time in his timeline, and his style of teaching mostly consisted of amused humming whenever they got something wrong.

 _Zak's_ teaching method seems to be setting out to kill him.

He keeps forgetting that this isn't his timeline - he'll expect Darryl to do one thing and he says another. He keeps forgetting that when Darryl makes a swipe at him, he can't catch him by the wrist and pull him into an embrace, laughing.

(He keeps wrapping Darryl's hand in his, and then remembering when it's too late to remove it. He thinks his face must be apple red.)

"I think I'm holding this wrong," Darryl says for the fiftieth time.

His wrist is too limp, the knife held at an uncomfortable angle. The dude has one brain cell sometimes, but even Zak's not oblivious enough to miss the flush on his cheeks, or the way he's already extending his hands, eager to be corrected.

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Glances off to the side.

A few people have shown up; Dave is off to one side, watching carefully. Mega and Zelk have been alternating between placing bets and cackling at the way Zak keeps getting flustered, but he doesn't actually remember seeing them arrive; either way, Geo is wandering down to join them, juggling too-hot bread between two palms and looking curious.

Four witnesses if Zak has a meltdown doing this.

He swallows, and takes Darryl's hand anyway.

"Okay," he begins again, "so you grip the knife like this. . ."

///

Eventually, Darryl gets to grips enough that they lapse into a focused silence. The crowd at the edges of the field has only grown, but they're hushed - Zak can't even hear them moving. It's just the sound of he and Darryl's footsteps on the soft grass, the clang and slide of their blades hitting the mark, and the subtle hiss where the knives split the air without meeting an opponent.

He narrows his eyes and makes a swipe for Darryl's ribs. Darryl bounces back, a grin playing around his lips, then sways back into place and uses the movement to slash at Zak's stomach. Zak blocks it, and he doesn't hit armour. Darryl's eyes narrow to match his, mouth twisting.

Zak flicks his wrist. Darryl's knife goes flying, turning end over end in the air and embedding itself in the earth a few steps away.

Darryl watches it land, then grits his teeth.

Zak wants to smile. _Predictable._ He wants it back: thinks two knives are better than one.

Well. They are. But the main thing is that his focus will be off of Zak -

Leaving him open.

He twirls his two, reassuring himself that they're still there, that he's still holding them securely, then flips one around to hold it by the tip and throws it at Darryl's reaching arm.

Darryl's sleeve tears in one thin line, but it doesn't break the skin. His hand hesitates, then dives in and scoops up his knife instead of flinching away.

"Fuck," Zak says, not quite meaning to.

"Language." Darryl's lips are raised in the corners. A smirk. "And you're only saying that because you're losing."

Zak steps backwards, letting his face darken into a scowl. Darryl chases after him, stride predatory, and he thinks, _perfect._

He may have called Darryl predictable for it, but now that the positions are changed he remembers that he kind of likes having two knives over one, too.

Circling gets boring after a while, and Zak has never had the most patience. He descends in a flurry, hoping to keep Darryl on the defence; he feints to the right, then lunges around Darryl's left to try and land a hit on his flank.

Darryl takes the feint, then spins, arm tucking in to parry with one knife. The other swipes at Zak's face, fast and vicious enough to make his eyebrows lift as he leans back.

It seems to pass in front of his eyes in slow motion, tip so close to his forehead that he thinks he can feel the air blistering. He barely waits for it to pass and he's back in again, eyes dark and focused.

His knife stays low and to the right, gripped in a fist. Darryl has to dance back and to the right to evade it, completely opening up the path to Zak's abandoned knife.

Darryl realises his mistake as Zak dives for it; the knife goes whistling by again, neatly slicing off some of his shoelaces. Zak falls into an over-the-shoulder roll to absorb the impact, rolls to the side to avoid another blow, and forces himself to his feet.

They stand less than a metre away from each other, watching warily as they try to recover their breaths. Zak flexes one hand, the palm riddled with gravel and grit, and Darryl tenses like he's expecting it to start wielding flames or some shit.

"Had enough?" Zak says, forgetting it's a cheesy action line until a few people in the crowd groan.

Darryl's gaze hardens. "If you'd forgotten," he says, arch, "it's all-or-nothing right now. I'm just going to win this, and then you'll be too busy raging to ask that again."

He rolls his eyes hard enough for it to translate into body language. "Oh, fuck _off_ with that -"

"Language!"

Zak jolts forwards before the word's even fully out, knives up and ready. Darryl lets out a little screech and goes heavily on the defensive, yelling about fair warnings -

A little hair comes off the top of his head. Zak grits his teeth and meets Darryl's swings, match for match, knowing what he's going for before he does - left hand, right hand, take the left back and go in for an uppercut, _nasty but it works in a pinch._

And Darryl _is_ in a pinch - he's been driven back almost to the fence, on a side devoid of any others. They start to flow around, staying out of the way but too curious to stay distant.

Zak keeps up the hits, but he doesn't think he can outlast Darryl in terms of stamina. He fights down anything but adrenaline, listens to the clank of furious metal meeting inches from his face.

Darryl goes in for another aggressive sweep. Zak drops to the floor entirely to avoid it, kicks out a leg to trip him up -

Darryl jumps it -

Zak's expectations split from reality.

He's expecting Darryl to land from the jump and roll, coming up from behind with a knife to his back and a dumb quip at the ready. He's already turning in anticipation, raising a hand like he could block -

And the flat of a blade lands on his chest.

Darryl just landed. No fancy tricks.

Zak lets his chest heave, listening to his heartbeat race. Darryl isn't faring much better; there's sweat on his face, and the knife against his chest is ever-so-slightly moving, like his limbs are just as jelly-like as Zak's.

He blows out a gust of air and drops his weapons. "You win."

Darryl looks shocked, and then - delight dawns on his face, cracking it open in a huge beam. "I won? I won _all or nothing?"_

Zak groans loudly.

"You can't take it back!"

He shakes his head, not bothering to argue. Melting into a puddle sounds really nice right now, so he does - just a big Zak-puddle with a couple of knives floating in it.

People have arrived at their part of the fence. A lot of people are groaning, or trying to worm their way out of bets - a few others look just short of lifting Darryl up and giving him a victory lap.

Darryl stands for a moment longer, still victorious, and then sinks to the floor like his legs are jelly. His smile to Zak is blinding enough that he has to throw an arm over his eyes.

There's a short, familiar laugh - Dave, standing over him. Zak lets his arm fall to one side and looks back up at him, wary.

"You fought good," Dave says eventually. "Spar with me sometime?"

Zak is too tired to show strong emotions, which is good because that offer makes him _super_ excited. He's rusty fighting against actual _people -_ Dave will beat the shit out of him with a stale baguette and have fun doing it.

But he doesn't want to be presumptuous. "Is that a question or a request?"

"Yes."

Zak cracks a grin. "I'm too tired right now," he says, "but sure. I will."

Dave looks down at him for a while, eyes light, and then says, "Hmm," and turns and leaves.

Darryl's foot starts bouncing off Zak's shin excitedly. Zak turns his head to look and the grass tickles the back of his neck. Darryl's smile is all dimples and delight; his chest goes warm and melt-soft under the summer sun and that look. He feels lighter than he has in weeks.

"Thanks," he murmurs, quietly enough that it's just Darryl who hears.

Darryl's foot slows to rest against his leg. Zak is grinning so hard it hurts, limbs still wobbly, already a little resigned for later, when literally _all_ of his friends are going to mock him for this.

"No problem," Darryl whispers back.

The sun is warm. His friends are laughing around them; they've swarmed the fence and joined the two of them on the grass, pushing each other and yelling. Finn is proudly waving around all the money he won, and Dave is leaning against the fence snorting at all of them like he doesn't join in with the stupidity half the time. Somewhere in the thick of things, he can hear Zelk gleefully translating Mega's insults as Spifey tries to argue with him.

It's the best day he's had in a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> 44th fic in the tag babey!


End file.
